Fennel-Apple Salad ♥ with Orange-Zest Candied Black Walnuts

Today's winter salad: Chopped fennel and apple served atop orange rounds. This is a decidedly savory fruit salad but is topped by not-to-be-missed candied black walnuts brightened with orange zest. Vegan.

Story goes that Cajun culturist Justin Wilson, when asked what's for supper, will answer with his own question, "Whaddaya got?" and then decide. Do you cook in that inspired, improvisational way? If so, I bow in homage! Me, nearly always I am a "recipe cook" who starts with a list of ingredients, albeit one who then tugs and twists those ingredients to simplify techniques and match my idea of what's good and what's healthy.

Last week, the Missouri Organic Association hosted its annual conference here in St. Louis and three local chefs and three local bloggers teamed up for an Iron Chef-style cookoff. Talk about cooking outside my comfort zone – in public!

But I must say, talk about a total kick, thanks to my collaborator chef Pat Long from Cafe Mosaic in Washington, Missouri. In one hour, the challenge was to somehow start to finish combine three surprise ingredients, tilapia, sunchokes and black walnuts. The salad here is one of two dishes Pat and I really liked, especially the candied black walnuts made special with the addition of orange zest. (Did I say orange zest? Yes I did!) Bummer, the judges didn't agree – except for the candied black walnuts!

Special (Useful & Informative) Stuff ♥ from A Veggie Venture

So who else has a junk drawer where you stash little bits and pieces of indispensable useful and necessary "stuff"? I have one in the kitchen – though somewhere along the way we started to call it the drunk door not the junk drawer. (That's amusing, of course, only because there's no alcohol issue here.) Anyway. That drawer is home to anything-to-everything from keys to rubberbands to odd tools to 3x5 recipe cards to chapstick to dozens of small items handy to keep handy. I open this drawer many times a day and still couldn't tell you exactly what's in it without an audit.

Well, that's what this page is all about, it's a collection of ""stuff" collected over the years – writing not easily categorizable but nonetheless useful. So I've started a collection of this Special Stuff – posts that I hope readers find helpful and informative and now that they're in one place, easy to find, too.

Chickpeas with Tomatoes, Spinach & Feta ♥

Today's vegetarian supper, a vegetarian version of one of my favorite suppers of all time. It's made with favorite pantry ingredients (don't we just love chickpeas?!) and fresh spinach and a salty sprinkle of feta cheese.

No surprise, I love-love-love cookbooks, especially the ones that teach, the ones that inspire movement to the kitchen now, the ones that introduce new ideas and new techniques but still KISS (you know, Keep It Simple, um, Silly). So a couple of weeks ago, a new cookbook arrived, one that is getting a lot of attention, one I was so excited to preview. But the truth is, it left me cold. Finding ingredients would require moving to New York or maybe Italy. Fish is great but really, aren't we worried about our fast-depleting fisheries? (Tastes vary. You just might just love this cookbook. But I'm not going to mention it by name because, well, I'm just not.)

But one recipe did fit my it's-winter-and-I-crave-simple-comfort-food mentality. But a few minutes in, I realized how "simple" is different than "nothing going on". On a dime, I saved supper by converting the dish from bland nothing-ness into a vegetarian version of one of my favorite dishes of all time, Shrimp with Tomatoes, Spinach & Feta.

How to Roast Vegetables ♥15 Tips & A Master Recipe

Quick! Name the single technique for cooking vegetables that we can use again and again, the same method for every single vegetable, without ever once referring to a “recipe”.

Hint: In part, the attraction to this style of cooking vegetables is seasonal. It begins in the autumn as the air turns cool and our bodies begin to crave hearty food to sustain us through the long dark winter. It’s perfect for winter, when a kitchen is an oasis of warmth and our bodies demand fresh healthy food.

Give up? It’s roasting vegetables. You’ll never forget again, once you’ve tried roasting vegetables, whether root vegetables like beets, carrots, sweet potatoes and parsnips or others like zucchini, kohlrabi and this time of year, winter squash like butternut and acorn squash.

Truth is, roasting transforms vegetables. If vegetables were to write a love letter, the page would begin, “Dear Oven: How we love thee. You coax the sweetness from our earthly forms, you transform our color into golden bites of caramel.”

The technique is dead simple, requiring just vegetables, oil and seasoning – and heat. Still, a few simple tricks will help. So make this your year to get up close and acquainted with roasting vegetables. Start with a vegetable you already like. If you like, check the roasted vegetable recipes for a recipe to eliminate uncertainty about temperature and timing. Soon enough, you’ll be writing your own love letter.

How to Roast Vegetables - Tips & Techniques & A Master Recipe